SURGEONS MAGIC TOUCH

Americans turn down syringes but go UNDER SCALPELS. What do these doctors know that the rest of medicine doesn't?

- Alexis Kayser

WHEN DR. AMANDEEP BHALLA ENTERS the operating room, the outside world melts away. There are no phone calls to take, no MyChart messages to return, no strict timetables to adhere to. The priority is clear: the person on the table. A beating heart and breathing lungs. Hands that someone in the waiting room is eager to hold again.

Bhalla thinks of his newborn daughter and his aging parents, of every life that intertwines with the one lying, unconscious, on his operating table. It's a "tremendous honor," a "fantastic gift" to be trusted like this, the spine surgeon told Newsweek from his Long Beach, California, office-and there is nothing more important than being worthy of that trust.

"When a patient is under anesthesia, the only thing in the world that everybody in the room is focused on is the patient," Bhalla said.

Each year, 15 million Americans have some sort of surgery, according to the American College of Surgeons. These patients give control of their bodies and oftentimes, their lives-to a surgeon who was likely a stranger until just before the procedure.

Such complete trust is increasingly rare in the healthcare industry, which is bleeding public confidence year over year. In 2023, 56 percent of Americans rated the honesty and ethical standards of medical doctors "high" or "very high," according to Gallup's most recent Honesty and Ethics poll. That's a 9-point decrease from 2019.

But despite this waning trust, surgeons say they are busier than ever. Ambulatory surgery centers are springing up by the thousands. Cosmetic surgery procedures increased 19 percent between 2019 and 2022, according to data from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. Some elective surgeries saw particularly high growth rates during the same time period, like breast reductions, which rose 54 percent.